SAYINGS

Continued from previous page they hear were becoming more and more important. The formula above is how I captured it.

We know this intuitively—that the folks we have up front either add to our credibility or detract from it—but we should remember it more often. Because our church is blessed with many gifted communicators and attractive personalities, we need to choose who gets more visibility.

How do we decide? Giftedness, of course. Availability, yes. But the biggest question we ask ourselves is: How good is it for our church to be influenced by this person?

Beware those who compliment you at someone else’s expense.

Church dynamics always include pitfalls. It’s the human element. I’ve helped lead churches of 200, 400, 600, 1,500, and 3,000, and I have observed that some pitfalls are slightly deeper in larger churches. Because our church has multiple worship leaders and multiple speakers (and because we’ve had staff transitions along the way), we have heard many comparisons voiced by the people of our church.

When we welcomed a new worship leader several years ago, some members didn’t adjust quickly or well. They loved and appreciated the sincere vibe of our longtime worship leader (who remained on the worship team), so the new worship leader’s hip look and presentational style gave those members an opportunity to compliment the former worship leader— at the expense of the new worship leader. And the same kind of thing has occurred among those on our staff who preach in our weekend gatherings.

So we train our staff to evaluate compliments. We teach them to beware of people